Steam tells SJWs to take a hike

This is the correct way to publicly respond to SJW demands and it is the right and reasonable attitude for companies in the game industry to take. It is encouraging to see Steam take the lead on this by comprehensively rejecting SJW demands.

Recently there’s been a bunch of community discussion around what kind of games we’re allowing onto the Steam Store. As is often the case, the discussion caused us to spend some time examining what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, and how we could be doing it better. Decision making in this space is particularly challenging, and one that we’ve really struggled with. Contrary to many assumptions, this isn’t a space we’ve automated – humans at Valve are very involved, with groups of people looking at the contents of every controversial title submitted to us. Similarly, people have falsely assumed these decisions are heavily affected by our payment processors, or outside interest groups. Nope, it’s just us grappling with a really hard problem.

Unfortunately, our struggling has resulted in a bunch of confusion among our customers, developer partners, and even our own employees. So we’ve spent some time thinking about where we want to be on this, and we’d like to talk about it now. But we also think it’s critical to talk about how we’ve arrived at our position, so you can understand the trade-offs we’re making.

The challenge is that this problem is not simply about whether or not the Steam Store should contain games with adult or violent content. Instead, it’s about whether the Store contains games within an entire range of controversial topics – politics, sexuality, racism, gender, violence, identity, and so on. In addition, there are controversial topics that are particular to games – like what even constitutes a “game”, or what level of quality is appropriate before something can be released.

Common questions we ask ourselves when trying to make decisions didn’t help in this space. What do players wish we would do? What would make them most happy? What’s considered acceptable discussion / behavior / imagery varies significantly around the world, socially and legally. Even when we pick a single country or state, the legal definitions around these topics can be too broad or vague to allow us to avoid making subjective and interpretive decisions. The harsh reality of this space, that lies at the root of our dilemma, is that there is absolutely no way we can navigate it without making some of our players really mad.

In addition, Valve is not a small company – we’re not a homogeneous group. The online debates around these topics play out inside Valve as well. We don’t all agree on what deserves to be on the Store. So when we say there’s no way to avoid making a bunch of people mad when making decisions in this space, we’re including our own employees, their families and their communities in that.

So we ended up going back to one of the principles in the forefront of our minds when we started Steam, and more recently as we worked on Steam Direct to open up the Store to many more developers: Valve shouldn’t be the ones deciding this. If you’re a player, we shouldn’t be choosing for you what content you can or can’t buy. If you’re a developer, we shouldn’t be choosing what content you’re allowed to create. Those choices should be yours to make. Our role should be to provide systems and tools to support your efforts to make these choices for yourself, and to help you do it in a way that makes you feel comfortable.

With that principle in mind, we’ve decided that the right approach is to allow everything onto the Steam Store, except for things that we decide are illegal, or straight up trolling. Taking this approach allows us to focus less on trying to police what should be on Steam, and more on building those tools to give people control over what kinds of content they see.

Give people control over what they want to see, but otherwise stay out of it. That’s the best approach for large corporations to take, although they’re still going to have to get rid of their internal SJWs if they want to avoid eventual convergence. It’s good to see the game industry refusing to back down despite the near-total convergence of the so-called games media.

Secrets of the Nethercity

Our friends at Autarch are running a new Kickstarter campaign for an epic kilodungeon for the ACKS role-playing game system called The Secrets of the Nethercity. They do quality stuff. Full disclosure: I’m a backer.

For three thousand years, the secrets of the Nethercity have been hidden. Now the delving of man has breached the ruins, and the lore and treasures of the ancients wait in the darkness below for those bold enough to seize them. But an inhuman evil slumbers in that darkness, and the time of the Awakening is at hand….

We’re excited to announce Autarch’s eighth Kickstarter project: The Secrets of the Nethercity™, an immersive dungeon for the Adventurer Conqueror King System™ and other D20 fantasy role-playing games.

With Secrets of the Nethercity you get:

  • An epic “kilodungeon” with 240 location entries spread across 20 different dungeon sub-regions that can be explored in a nonlinear fashion over the course of your campaign 
  • 12 new monsters, including the chryselephantine statue, faewyrd, hydropian, and terror of death
  • 30 new magic items, including the bag of faerie seeds, the funerary barge of the cults, horn of the eagles, scepter of sacred power, and shadowcowl robe
  • 4 new character classes, including the elven cultist, hierophant, and warlord
  • A special appendix providing step-by-step worksheets to adapt the Nethercity to your favorite campaign setting
  • A home base (the city of Cyfaraun) for use by your adventurers in between dungeon delves. The city is presented in summary format in the adventure itself, and the city and the sewers below it are presented in more detail in a supplement called Capital of the Borderlands (available at $20 and above pledge level). With every bonus goal, we’ll expand the city and sewer levels!
  • The Nethercity, the city, and the sewer level in between are all beautifully mapped by the incredible cartography of Dyson Logos and Simon Forster. You get maps of the city, sewers, and Nethercity, as well as zoomed-in sectional maps of each major area. With every bonus goal we hit, we’ll add more maps.

As great as that sounds, I am even more excited about rumors that Autarch’s next crowd-funding effort is going to be something on the wargaming front. The fantasy wargaming front.

Mailvox: fencing, converged

A swordsman comments on the convergence in the historical fencing community in Europe.

I practice historical European swordsmanship as a hobby. Recently, two of the most gifted and well-regarded fencers/teachers in our small community have been under attack, including calls to boycott merchandise bearing their names, because they are “Nazis”.  IOW, they publicly object to the ongoing invasion of their native Sweden. Also, in general the community is being “converged” and made unwelcoming to anyone right of Lenin, following your descriptions of the phenomenon to the letter.

Formerly politics was not a viciously divisive matter in our community. Heck, when I first started 15 years ago libertarianism was probably the most represented political persuasion.  It has gotten so bad that the vocal SJWism is likely keeping some Christians and conservatives from joining the community. The irony of SJWs trying to drive Christians and nationalists away from the study of an art which was originally practiced by Medieval knights cannot be overstated.

Enough men in the community recognize this as nonsense that there is something of a counter-movement coalescing, although it is still in the very early and informal stages. As the leading researcher on SJW convergence, is there any particular advice you could offer?  In any case, these events are yet more confirmation of theory.

There are two options. Either drive out all the SJWs by banning all reference to politics and attempts to thought-police the community or leave en masse, form a new organization, and be damned sure to keep all the SJWs out. Either make it an explicitly Christian or nationalist organization, and be sure that whoever is in charge is not overly eager to pursue female membership; those are the men who are primarily responsible for convergence happening in the first place because they will excuse literally anything so long as it gives them an opportunity to have some women around.

The most important thing is to lead by example. Don’t argue, don’t warn, and don’t negotiate. If I were in this fencer’s position, I would start a new organization with the two leading guys and refuse to have anything to do with any of the known SJWs while welcoming those willing to leave the old organization for the new one.

Mondiale Day Two

I paid no attention to the first two games, but Spain-Portugal is proving even more entertaining that expected. 2-1 Portugal at halftime, with Ronaldo scoring both goals.

WOW! Love him or hate him, Cristiano Ronaldo is simply awesome. Portugal came very close to stealing that game from a superior Spanish team.

Delusion creates illusion

A comment thread at Bounding Into Comics about Alt★Hero #1 illustrates the core problem with tolerating gammas, even when one rides herd on them.

Considering how much of an asshole/sperg Vox Day is to everyone in his blog and his “my way or the highway” mentality, I’m surprised this isn’t a massive disaster or that Vox didn’t fire everybody midway through for not kissing his ass hard enough. That said, it seems this is fun and good enough, so I hope this does well and can keep going forward in the hands of other more capable people.
– Skullomaniac

Vox gets attacked constantly and doesn’t tolerate it anymore. He is an excellent guy to work for, however, and allows a lot of creative leeway.
– David The Good

I have followed his blog for a couple of years now and I’m convinced he has a severe attitude problem with everyone who may dissent even 0.001{329aa4aef5613a80085c3dd6bd84f5d0e8f5581fdc29e0868f0c3a40e8b25a32} with him, and he often appears to demand complete obedience to his words.
– Skullomaniac

It’s been an interesting process to watch. I started reading Vox Day’s blog back in 2008 and the discussions were provocative and harsh at times, but they were also thoughtful and highly-intellectual. Stay on topic, but nothing was really off the table because it was by and large a self-policing community. No one was afraid to question anyone else, including the proprietor of the blog. It was still largely the same through the Sad Puppies situation. Then, as the Alt-Right started to become a thing and Vox Day became a figure within it, his blog readership increased very quickly and the community rapidly changed. When this happened, everything else changed with it, including the house rules and the attitude toward comments.
– Arcturus Rann

Notice the divorce between the guy who has followed the blog “for a couple of years now”, the guy who has followed it for a long time and actually works with me, and the guy who has followed it for a decade.

Merely having to deal with gammas and the psychological trash they drag in with them has been sufficient to convince some casual observers that I am an oversensitive, incapable sperg who requires people to kiss my ass and doesn’t allow any questioning of my opinion whatsoever. This, as those who work with me know, is almost the complete opposite of the truth; the most common criticism I receive from those who work with me is that I don’t give them enough guidance and oversight.

Granted, I’m not given to much in the way of kumbaya and cuddles either, but if I have repeatedly erred, it has always been on the side of giving people excessive responsibility for which they were not truly ready.

Anyhow, being a game designer, I am putting on my design hat to address this problem. It’s probably going to be based on letting the Dread Ilk decide who is, and who is not, allowed to comment here. What none of my critics realize is that I have actually been far more tolerant of the newcomers than most of the historical readership here prefers.

Darkstream: success comes through force-multiplication

From the transcript:

These are ways that we can support each other, that we can work together, and you know that’s how we not only survive but we thrive in this increasingly heated cultural war environment. And so you know, what I would encourage you to do is, in your own way, whether you’re talking about work, whether you’re talking about play, whether you’re talking about politics, is start thinking about the objective and stop worrying about your status or whether you’re getting as much credit as you feel you deserve. I’m not saying that those things are not important, I’m just saying that they are ultimately
less important then learning how to force-multiply your own efforts by working with other people.

Other people are always a force-multiplier, and that’s something it took me a long, long time to learn. You know we have a lot of volunteers now, with Castalia, with Infogalactic, with Arkhaven, and you know all of their efforts are very much appreciated, but it took me until, I think it was until three years ago, that I allowed anybody to volunteer for anything because I was always trying to do it myself. I was always trying to do it alone, and when you’re alone you are more easily isolated, obviously, you’re more easily ignored. There’s a reason why the first thing the SJWs do is to cut people out, to separate them from others, you know, freeze and isolate them as Alinsky wrote. They do that because it weakens you, they do that because it makes it easier to prevent you from having success, and so that’s why you need to be willing to give up the idea that you’re going be in charge, that you should be in charge, that you know best, etc.

If you want to be in charge of something, then you start something and people come to you, and they join you, and they force-multiply your efforts. What you cannot do, and you must not do, is to try to join somebody else’s group, and then share your wisdom with them and try to tell them what to do. You know that is always a mistake, that is always intrinsically offensive, and you should not be surprised when people don’t appreciate your efforts to help them. All right, if they ask for the help, great, but if you’re just doing it out of the goodness of your heart or something, I mean, come on, let’s be realistic with yourself, what you really want is you want the influence without the responsibility.

Don’t do that. You can only really have influence if you’re willing to take responsibility for yourself, and the person who is responsible is the person who has the skin in the game and as Talib correctly tells us – no this is not leading from the bottom it’s not about leading at all, that’s the whole point, to get over the drive to lead – if you want to lead, you have to have people who voluntarily follow you of their own free will. You need to start walking in a direction and if people follow you, then you’re the leader, but what you cannot do is try to jump in and try to hijack the microphone, hijack the group, hijack the planning, hijack the strategy, that is all wrong! You’re not helping people by doing that, you’re actually creating problems. So, before you can be a good leader, you have to learn how to be a good and reliable follower.

Gammas are not welcome here

I think it is now time to openly institute an anti-gamma policy. It’s no secret that I detest them and their behavioral patterns, but I simply don’t have the time or the patience to tolerate their antics any longer. The now-banned Pale Male’s nonsense is a good example of why they simply aren’t worth the effort required to put up with them.

You forgot the modifier:  Social science is not scientific. That’s because “social” is a modifier meaning “not”:  social science, social justice, social work…. Tell us, Vox:  have you ever taken a course in physics?  Did you pass?

This is classic gamma bullshit utilizing the four As of the gamma.

  1. Assume a superior, lecturing pose.
  2. Assert that the other party has made a mistake, and in doing so, demonstrate a complete failure to have understood what the other party said.
  3. Attack the other party instead of addressing the subject at hand.
  4. Attempt to disqualify and discredit the other party in lieu of demonstrating the errors of their position.
The whole point of the post, which was explicitly stated, was that scientistry (the scientific profession) is increasingly not utilizing scientody (the scientific method). That is what “science is not scientific” means and the observation applies to both the hard and the soft sciences, as has been chronicled here on several occasions. My having taken, or not taken, courses in physics at the high school and college levels has absolutely nothing to do with the accuracy of my observations concerning corruption in science. All aspects of science. After all, I haven’t taken a single course in psychology, which would theoretically be even more relevant to the subject, and yet the gamma doesn’t ask about that… because he knows perfectly well such questions aren’t relevant.

You forgot that using the Stanford prison experiment to conclude anything whatsoever about physics is a non sequitur. Completely different people, methods, standards of evidence, reproducibility (institutional review boards would no doubt prohibit it today), everything.

I didn’t forget anything. I’m literally the individual who coined the sarcastic expression “You can trust biologists. Because physicists get amazingly accurate results.” As I pointed out in my response, that is like saying that because Charles Ponzi was a completely different person living at a completely different time and using completely different methods than Bernie Madoff, and operating under very different regulatory standards, it is a non sequitur to use his actions to conclude anything about Madoff’s.

Physicists are people, subject to the same incentives and motives and character flaws as psychologists. They are corrupted in the same way and for the same reasons. And we already possess considerable evidence that some of them are behaving in exactly the same way, despite their various differences. Just ask Stickwick about how intellectually and scientifically pure academic physicists are these days.

Tell us, Vox: have you ever taken a course in physics? Did you pass? Your own rule: 2… If you are asked a direct question relevant to the topic, then you will be expected to answer it in a straightforward and non-evasive manner… I’d bet 10:1 I know the answer but I want it straight from you.

Notice that he is posturing as if he is confident, and yet he doesn’t commit himself publicly to a position, for fear that he will be proven wrong. This is textbook gamma posturing. And he is still trying to make the subject about me, rather than about the big news concerning the scientific fraud underlying one of the most famous studies in social science, while trying to use my own rules against me.

Of course, being careless and obsessive like all gammas, he stopped reading once he found what he was looking for and failed to read the whole thing.

29. These Rules may in no case be interpreted contrary to the purposes and principles of Vox Day, as solely determined by Vox Day.

I’m still waiting for him to tell us if he’s actually gone there in physics, and how far.

Notice how he’s “still waiting” for an answer to a question he never even asked. That’s because this is not a relevant question, it is an attempt to “win” the discussion through discrediting and disqualification; he’s begun to fear that I have taken a course in physics and is preemptively laying the groundwork for moving the goalposts. Which, of course, is why I ignored the question in the first place. Whenever you successfully answer a gamma’s initial attempt to discredit and disqualify you, he will simply respond with another question intended to do the same. This process never ends until a) you kick him out, b) he finally manages to come up with a question that allows him to say HA!, c) you have such impeccable credentials that he falls silent in embarrassment, or d) you ignore him so long that he finally gives up and goes away.

I wasn’t the only one who noticed the flashing neon signs saying “warning: gamma at work ahead”.

In what way is Vox’s educational history relevant to the question? Are you always this dishonest, or only when challenged? This is a sneering, gamma-ish, and obviously false assertion of the appeal to authority, and you should know this.

And notice how the gamma always eventually brings the discussion back around to himself. Every single time. Note that literally no one asked about his credentials, his degrees, or what subjects he studied, but that didn’t prevent him from telling everyone anyhow.

I stopped my formal study of chemistry in my freshman year of college, but I’m still working on it.  Autodidact, check.  I’m sketching hardware to do practical applications. 

After initially trying to ignore his antics to no avail, I opted for Option A and kicked Pale Male out. He’s now banned from commenting on the blog, and I plan to similarly ban every single gamma who acts up and subjects us to similar antics. From now on, if anyone even addresses me in a personally challenging or passive-aggressive manner, I’m just going to delete their comments. I have learned over 15 years of daily blogging that it is always a waste of time to even answer such commenters; they add nothing to the discourse, they inevitably attempt to derail the discussion, they try to snarkily disqualify everyone who disagrees with them, and they inevitably start to talk about themselves instead of the subject at hand.

This is not a place for gammas to show the whole world what smart boys they are. This is not a place for anyone to attempt to work out their psychological issues. And above all, this is not a place to waste my time. Everyone is welcome to express THEIR OWN opinion about THE SUBJECT BEING DISCUSSED, they are not permitted to attempt to hijack the microphone or try to elevate their perceived status at my, or anyone else’s, expense. If I tell you that you are wrong, you are welcome to try to prove that you were actually correct, but any attempt to attack, disqualify, or discredit me in lieu of an actual defense of your assertions will be nuked on sight.

And while you’re welcome to try to correct me if you think I am wrong, you had damn well better cross your t’s, dot your i’s, and get all of your ducks in a row while you make your case for it, because there are few things I despise more than one of my intellectual inferiors wasting my time by erroneously attempting to “correct” me, especially by citing orthodox information with which I am obviously already familiar. If all you’ve got is a snarky passive-aggressive statement of opinion that is a prelude to the usual routine, just go away and don’t come back. Or at the very least, keep it to yourself. I’m not even remotely interested in playing stupid gamma games.

The Swamp still protecting itself

Does Inspector General Michael Horowitz think he’s been employed as a defense attorney or something?

A bombshell report released Thursday by the Justice Department’s inspector general includes new evidence that an FBI agent and an agency lawyer who were having an affair in 2016 were also plotting to keep President Donald Trump from winning the election.

In an email on August 8, 2016, Special Agent Peter Strzok reassured Page that she needn’t worry about Trump winning the White House.

Trump is ‘not ever going to become president, right? Right?!’ Page texted Strzok. 

‘No. No he’s not. We’ll stop it,’ he responded.

Inspector General Michael Horowitz wrote that ‘[s]everal FBI employees who played critical roles in the investigation sent political messages,’ but concluded that ‘the conduct by these employees cast a cloud over the entire FBI investigation.’

He declared that the IG’s office ‘did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that improper considerations, including political bias, directly affected the specific investigative actions we reviewed.’

The 500-page report also found that then-FBI Director James Comey ‘deviated’ from the standard practices of his agency when dealing with the probe into Hillary Clinton’s classified emails.

But IG Michael Horowitz emphasized that Comey was more knuckleheaded than malicious.

‘While we did not find that these decisions were the result of political bias on Comey’s part, we nevertheless concluded that by departing so clearly and dramatically from FBI and department norms, the decisions negatively impacted the perception of the FBI and the department as fair administrators of justice,’ the report reads.

I’m beginning to notice a certain pattern to the Swamp’s ability to excuse itself from any and all culpability for criminal activity. Even when a crime has been committed, it’s excused because the perpetrator didn’t mean to commit it, they’re just one of a bunch of knuckleheads who mean well and are good boys and are gwan to go to college.

It’s remarkable how this so-called investigator sounds like a old black community activist lamenting how a few gang-banging knuckleheads ruin it for everyone.

Science is not scientific

And as a result, it’s mostly fake. That’s the only conclusion that can be honestly reached in light of the fact that the single most famous experiment in social science turns out to have been a fraud:

One of the most famous and influential psychology studies of all time was based on lies and fakery, a new exposé reveals.

The Stanford prison experiment purported to show we are all naturally inclined to abuse positions of power – after volunteers randomly assigned to act as prison guards began abusing volunteer inmates in a mock prison.

But now a report from author and scientist Dr Ben Blum claims the research was all a sham. It points to recordings found in archives at Stanford University which show the study’s author Professor Philip Zimbardo encouraged guards to treat inmates poorly.

Also, one volunteer prisoner has now admitted to faking a fit of madness that the study reported was driven by the prison’s brutal conditions.

The revelations have sent scientists into uproar, with some calling for the experiment and its findings to be wiped from psychology textbooks worldwide.

We certainly live in interesting times. I knew that most “scientific” economics was a fraud, and I’d concluded that all “scientific” evolution was a fraud, but it is clear that the rot begins in physics and goes all the way down through the softest social sciences.

The central problem is simple enough, as it is the result of the gap between the theory of scientody and the reality of scientistry. Scientistry doesn’t incentivize or require replication, so no one even bothers trying to replicate the vast majority of studies and experiments.